


She is Happy

by tuesdaysinoctober



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Growth, Mai backstory, Other, Personal Growth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:34:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28081758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesdaysinoctober/pseuds/tuesdaysinoctober
Summary: The backstory Mai deserves
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar), Mai/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 31





	She is Happy

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo we on the Lil Zutarians server, ages ago, were talking vaguely about how there are some great women characters in ATLA that aren't fleshed out. And I have decided to flesh them out. So this is the events of ATLA and before and after through Mai's perspective because, let's be honest, Bryke kinda has a habit of doing ATLA women disfavors by not writing them out. I genuinely do not know what to tag this and I'm pretty sure I messed up the ages but I'm rewriting so what does it matter?

Mai was born out of whispers of, “I think I’m pregnant” and “We’re too young” and a hasty marriage after a hasty engagement. 

She heard once that the day she was born was unusually cold for Fire Nation weather and that it was an easy birth, like the cold was welcoming her into the world. 

Mai doesn’t know if it’s natural not to remember the first six years of her childhood but one memory tends to stick out. 

She was holding a doll, or maybe two. There was a closed door-- her mother had said not to open it, but she really wanted to play with someone and she couldn’t find any of the other children wandering around the palace. Mother was the next best option. 

Mai remembers pushing open the door, and getting stares from noblemen and women alike. Her mother stands up from her seat at the table, a gracious smile on her face.  


“I apologize for my daughter’s intrusion,” she says, and while she’s smiling at the nobles, her eyes are boring into Mai. “She is young and doesn’t understand. Please carry on without me while I take care of this.” 

She is grabbed by the arm, hustled outside, and met face to face with anger. 

“What did I tell you?” her mother hisses. “If that door is not open, you do not go in.” 

“I wanted someone to play with me.”

“You are old enough to play by yourself. Go.” There’s a pointed finger, and a quiet whimper and then Mai remembers being back in her room, playing with the dolls alone. 

At eight, she is sent to the Royal Fire Academy for Girls. It is there that she meets Ty Lee, a bright, happy girl with an inclination to Azula, who is the daughter of Prince Ozai and Princess Ursa. Mai shows them her knives quietly and is well received because of it. 

Azula is the obvious leader of their group, the trailblazer. Ty Lee is lively, the one to keep things light when she thinks things are getting a little too dark for her taste. Mai is quiet, she can never be anything but quiet, although sometimes she lets a comment slip that makes Azula snicker or Ty Lee laugh. 

When she is eleven, at a ball celebrating the coronation of Fire Lord Ozai, her parents remind her to be quiet and stay out of the way. She accomplishes this by dancing with the two boys her mother assigned to her, and then staying in the corner with her knives. Ty Lee and Azula come over and talk to her for a little bit but they disappear quickly enough, to make mischief somewhere. 

“Do you wanna dance?” a voice asks. 

Mai recognizes the boy when she looks up. It’s Azula’s brother, Zuko. His hands are tucked behind his back and he seems to be looking everywhere but Mai. 

“Okay,” she says. 

They dance awkwardly, they are eleven and twelve after all, but Mai enjoys it. Zuko is quiet, but not quiet in the way Azula is. He isn’t plotting, he’s just there. 

A crush quickly develops, and she isn’t sure if it’s reciprocated or not but Azula milks it with every chance she has and Ty Lee giggles along. She and Zuko tend to get along, though, and they work on their studies together. 

Mai is not stupid; she knows why Zuko is banished a year later. She knows that he spoke out against the Fire Lord and that she should hate him because of it but she cannot. Zuko lingers in her mind, dancing on the edges, what little memories she has of him taunting her, taunting her with possibility. 

She spends the next two years ushered around balls and dinners, curtsying and staying quiet when introduced to guests before disappearing with Azula and Ty Lee or to her room, where Mai can be alone, truly alone, just for a minute. 

When her baby brother is born and when her parents uproot her to Omashu, it’s a ridiculous hope, and she knows it’s a ridiculous hope, but that doesn’t stop a little rebellious part of her from wishing she would run into Zuko on the journey. She doesn’t, and Omashu becomes a repeat of what Caldera City was. 

Azula comes days after her sixteenth birthday, and Ty Lee along with her. It is a way to not labor the days away, bored out of her mind, so Mai accepts her offer to capture Zuko. Is this how she imagined they would meet again, after so many years? No, but it’s a way to meet again. 

Mai fights against the Avatar and his friends but she gains Zuko in a way she could never imagine. They are together and he is too jealous and she wants to show him she cares but can’t. It’s not natural. They are matches for other people, but she thinks that she can hold out, that they can hold out, long enough to be almost happy until he leaves. He leaves and he leaves her and he is betraying their country, why? 

Mai cannot believe her luck when her father receives word from her uncle that Zuko showed up with one of the Avatar’s friends at the Boiling Rock. She tells Azula immediately, and Azula, still in her quest to capture her brother, takes Mai and Ty Lee along with her. 

She is ready to confront Zuko, to yell, but he remains adamant in his decision to abandon the nation, abandon her. 

That’s why Mai doesn’t know why she stops Azula when Zuko and his friends make their escape. She doesn’t know why the words, “I love Zuko more than I fear you” fall out of her mouth. And she especially doesn’t know why Ty Lee joins her. 

“Do you love Zuko?” Ty Lee asks her in their shared cell, where they’re thrown after they betray Azula. 

“I don’t know,” Mai admits. “I-- I just didn’t want him to be in Azula’s hands, you know?” 

After the war, after the Agni Kai, she goes to visit him. 

He’s different. She can’t explain it. It’s not either Zuko she knew. This is a very different boy.

The waterbender girl comes to tend to his wound and Mai can tell. Mai can tell by the way they talk to each other, by the way the waterbender touches him and the way that he looks at her that Mai doesn’t have his heart anymore and maybe she never did. 

She gets over it. Too quickly? She doesn’t know. Mai almost saw it coming. Almost. 

Ty Lee understands, and she listens, and Mai listens to her, too, about her family and her sisters and Ty Lee’s frustrations and Mai sees another side of Ty Lee she’s never seen before. She rather likes it, if she's being honest.

Years later, she attends Zuko and Katara’s wedding. So does Ty Lee and her and Ty Lee dance together. It is not awkward when they dance, but graceful, and Mai thinks that she is happy.


End file.
